Born Laura Kabasomi Kakoma in Champaign, Illinois on June 6, 1981, the jazz vocalist and composer is better known by her stage name, Somi. Born to parents from Rwanda and Uganda and raised between the American Midwest and southern Africa, she grew up inhabiting multiple cultural worlds. Her music blends vocal jazz with African grooves, soul, and pop songwriting, using narrative as its connective tissue. Her debut album, Eternal Motive (2003), introduced her as a striking interpretive singer, but it was her later work that established her voice as singular. Albums such as The Lagos Music Salon (2014) drew from an extended creative stay in Nigeria, while Petite Afrique (2017) painted a vivid musical portrait of African immigrant life in Harlem amid accelerating gentrification. A trained scholar with advanced degrees in African Studies and performance, she regularly weaves historical inquiry into her songwriting and stage work. That sensibility came fully into focus with Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba (2022), a tribute album honoring the legendary South African singer and activist. In parallel with her studio recordings, Somi has gained international recognition as a live performer. Her 2020 release Holy Room: Live at Alte Oper—recorded with the Frankfurt Radio Big Band—captured her at the intersection of vocal control and emotional openness, earning a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. With that nomination, she made history as the first African woman recognized in a Grammy jazz category, an achievement reflecting both personal artistry and broader cultural shift within the genre. Across albums, stage works, and collaborative projects, Somi’s music remains anchored in empathy and observation—concerned less with abstraction than with how people live, move, and belong. She has released a body of work that feels at once intellectually grounded and emotionally generous, expanding jazz’s vocabulary while keeping its human center firmly in focus.
